View full sizeAlabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, left, and Justice Tom Parker, are close political allies and share similar views on a number of issues. But the justices came down on opposite sides of a ruling on Friday, March 14, 2014, reinstating the conviction of capital murder defendant Lam Luong.

It was a divided state Supreme Court on Friday that reinstated the capital murder conviction of a man who threw his children off of the Dauphin Island bridge, and the justices broke down in an unusual pattern.

Justice Tom Parker once served as an aide to Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore and sometimes is caricatured as a clone of his former boss. But on Friday, Parker wrote a dissenting opinion, while Moore signed on to the majority ruling.

John Carroll, the dean of Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham, said Moore and Parker do not march in lock-step as consistently as some people may think. He said the two share similar views of about religion, but “if you go beyond that, you’ll see a lot of disparity. It stereotypes both them in the wrong way.”

Justice Lyn Stuart wrote the majority opinion, joined by Moore and Justices Mike Bolin, Greg Shaw and Tommy Bryan. Justice Jim Main joined Parker’s dissent, while Justice Glenn Murdock wrote a separate dissent.

Justice Kelli Wise recused herself because she was a member of the Court of Criminal Appeals when it overturned the conviction.

Stuart and Parker both relied heavily on the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling on an appeal by former Enron executive Jeffrey Skilling. But the justices disagreed about what that ruling means.

Stuart noted that the U.S. Supreme Court found that a federal judge did not err when he denied a request by Skilling to move the trial out of Houston, where the collapsed energy company was based.

Stuart acknowledged that the Luong case drew extensive news coverage, but she suggested that a request to relocate a trial based on pretrial publicity depends more on the content, rather than the quantity, of the media coverage. She wrote that news reports mainly focused on the surrounding facts, most of which Presiding Mobile County Circuit Judge Charles Graddick admitted into evidence.

“A review of the record simply does not support a finding that the content of the media coverage incited anger, revulsion, and indignation to the degree that jurors chosen from citizens of Mobile County could not determine Luong’s guilt or innocence based solely on the evidence presented at Trial,” the opinion states.

Parker, however, pointed to a survey commissioned by the defense showing that 84 percent of respondents had heard about the case and that 71 percent believed Luong was guilty.

Parker wrote that this trial was different than the Skilling case because unlike that trial, Luong had pleaded guilty – before changing his mind. News accounts broadcast that key prejudicial fact, he wrote.

“The media coverage in this case was extensive and sensational; I agree with the Court of Criminal Appeals concerning this issue and its conclusion that ‘Luong’s case represents one of those rare instances where prejudice must be presumed,’” he wrote.

Parker’s dissent also noted that majority opinion referenced the fact that the jury heard Luong’s confession and guilty plea.

“It appears that the main opinion concludes that because Luong was so obviously guilty it was harmless error that his Sixth Amendment right to an impartial jury was violated,” Parker wrote. “I disagree.”

Murdock wrote in his dissent that it is hard to imagine “more extensive and more prejudicial publicity” as this case. He also faulted Graddick for failing to allow lawyers to question prospective jurors individually about their knowledge of the case.

“I recognize that we have witnessed significant changes in news and communication technologies in recent years; however, the fundamental and well established constitutional principles at stake have not changed,” he wrote.